History

9. The renaming of Gillespie Road station

Gillespie Road Underground Station

The renaming of Gillespie Road tube station October 31 1932

Arsenal are the only football team in London with an Underground Station named after them.

This is largely down to foresight of Herbert Chapman, who pushed hard for the Tube stop just behind the North Bank to be re-christened. “Whoever heard of Gillespie Road,” he said at one point in the talks. “It is Arsenal around here!”

The idea had first occurred to Chapman when he visited the newly-relegated Arsenal in 1913 as manager of Leeds City. It took months of lobbying and the change meant that thousands of tickets, maps and signs had to be replaced. Even machinery had to be re-configured.

Eventually, on October 31, 1932, Arsenal made its debut on the London Underground.